The Winnipeg general strike, 1919 - Sam Lowry

A short history of Canada's Winnipeg general strike of 1919.

Throughout the spring of 1919, Winnipeg had been buzzing with the fervour of militant unionism among the working class. The city had witnessed a general strike the year previously, which had ended with partial gains for workers. Unemployment was high, wages were low and conditions poor. Soldiers returning from Europe after World War I were met with the fact that while they had been risking their lives in the trenches, companies at home had been making large profits from war contracts.

In March of 1919, labour leaders responded to the calls of workers with a meeting in Calgary, to discuss the formation of a One Big Union to win improvements in wages and conditions, as well as union recognition, which many workers didn't have. Due to Canada's virtually non-existent labour laws of the time, union recognition could only be officially recognised if an employer voluntarily decided to recognise the union, or through strike action by workers.

The immediate catalyst to the general strike was a conflict between the unions of building and metal workers, who had grouped together respectively under the Building and Metals Trades Councils, and their employers at the Winnipeg Builder's Exchange. The worker's representatives of the Building Trades Council demanded higher wages and improved conditions. However, their employers refused to recognise the union and would not enter negotiations, so a strike was launched on May 1.

With employers still refusing to enter negotiations with the union the next day, workers from the three leading metalworks factories in Winnipeg joined the builders on strike. On May 6, the Building and Metal Trades Councils asked the much larger Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council (WTLC) for assistance with the strike and its members were balloted as to whether to strike in support of the striking builders and metalworkers.

The results of the ballot were released on May 13, with members of the WTLC voting overwhelmingly for a general strike. The results surprised even the leaders of the WTLC, who expected solid support for the strike from the traditionally strong unions of railwaymen, foundry workers and factory workers, but found very strong support from other sectors, such as the fire fighters, cooks and waiters, tailors and even the police union.

The general strike was called on the 15th and a Central Strike Committee, comprised of elected members of unions affiliated to the WTLC, was set up to oversee the action and to make sure essential services still operated. Between 30-35,000 workers were on strike on the 15th, with union members being joined by thousands of non-union workers.

A counter-strike committee known as the Citizen's Committee of 1000 was almost immediately set up, which was essentially a group of Winnipeg's wealthiest industrialists, lawyers, bankers and politicians. Rather unsurprisingly, the Citizen's Committee, together with local newspapers (most of whose employees were on strike) launched a campaign against the strike in an attempt to discredit the actions of the workers, blaming the strike on "Bolsheviks", "alien scum" and "bohunks". Papers ran cartoons showing bomb throwing hook-nosed Jews and the New York Times ran a headline of "Bolshevism Invades Canada". There was of course no evidence to suggest that European workers had been in any way involved in leading the Winnipeg strike. The Citizen's Committee also dismissed most of the city's police force and installed their own militia since the Committee could not rely on the police force as the majority of police officers were striking.

As word of the strike spread, workers in other towns and cities across Canada declared themselves in solidarity with the Winnipeg strike and many strikes were announced in Brandon, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Regina, Vancouver, New Westminster, Victoria and up to 20 other towns.

Fearing the growing number of strikes and unrest across the country, the Federal Government decided to intervene and on May 22 sent the Labour Minister, Gideon Decker Robertson, and the Interior Minister, Arthur Meighen to meet with the Citizen's Committee and local government officials. An invitation to meet with the Strike Committee was declined. Upon the advice of the ministers, the government swiftly ordered all federal employees back to work or face dismissal, amended the Immigration Act so that British born workers could be deported and had the criminal code's definition of sedition broadened.

On May 30, members of the police force were told to sign a contract to prevent them from joining unions, they refused, but said that they would still maintain law and order. A few days later the entire police force was fired. June 1 saw the arrival of 100,000 soldiers home from Europe, who marched upon the mayor's office to declare themselves in solidarity with the strikers. The broadening of the sedition act led to the arrest of 10 strike leaders on June 17, as well as numerous arrests under the changed immigration laws. Rioting occurred throughout cities where strikes were being held, and over half of those arrested were freed.

To protest the arrest of the strike leaders, thousands of workers converged on Market Square in downtown Winnipeg on June 21 whereupon they were read the Riot Act by the mayor, who then called on the North West Mounted Police to disperse the strikers. As the mounted police charged, the crowds scattered into alleyways and side streets off the square, where they were met by "special police" who had been deputised by the city during the strike. Armed with baseball bats and other weaponry provided by local retailers, the special police fought with strikers. During the ensuing chaos 30 strikers were injured, and two were killed, the day becoming known as Bloody Saturday.

With troops occupying the streets, the combined force of local government and the employers forced the strike to end on June 25, six of the arrested strike leaders were released soon after. The remaining arrested men were convicted of "conspiracy to overthrow the government" and faced jail terms of six months to two years.

Labour militancy continued to act as a strong force in Canada throughout the early 1920s, especially in the coalmines of Alberta and Nova Scotia where a series of confrontations occurred into the mid-1920s. The labour movement eventually succumbed to the damage of anti-union campaigning, employers and government using the Red Scare to discredit the unions, and many factory employers setting up shop committees, from where they could monitor their employees activities carefully.

For six weeks during the summer of 1919, the working class of Winnipeg withdrew their labour from their employers and participated in the largest strike action in Canadian labour history, with support in the form of strikes and protests occurring across the whole of Canada, involving hundreds of thousands of workers. Although defeated and demoralised, the strikers of Winnipeg who, instead of asking of their employers what was rightfully theirs, took strike action and demanded it, were instrumental in laying the foundations for the improvements in conditions, wages and union recognition rights which occurred in Canada over the next 30 years.

Attached files

Comments

T La Palli

Feb 3 2012 17:28

If somebody has a good knowledge of this strike, perhaps somebody could direct me to some further reading.

I am trying to find out more about Willie Cooper. He was an Aberdonian involved with the Socialist League in Scotland. He supposedly played a prominent role in the strike. I am trying to find out more biographical information about him.

If you haven't already heard of it, you might be interested in Daniel Francis' "Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of 1981-1919; Canada's First War on Terror." It's available in print from Arsenal Pulp Press and in unabridged audio from Post Hypnotic Press. You can hear a sample here:

there's no search function on the SPC site that I could find but I did look through the history of the SPC (go to 'About the Socialist Party of Canada', and then 'History of the Socialist Party of Canada', I'd provide links but for some reason, because of the way the site is set up I presume, the link just takes you to the index) and then on pp 29-31 of that history text:

Winnipeg General Strike
The fright engendered by the Russian revolution gave fuel to the terror activity.

Nearly every action of an industrial or political character engaged in by workers to protect or improve their conditions of existence was seen as evidence of an overall plan to impose Bolshevism on the country. This attitude blanketed the cause and purpose of the Winnipeg strike of 1919.

There was undoubtedly an overall plan operating in the country, but it had nothing to do with Bolshevism. With the ending of the war and the return of tens of thousands of soldiers to civilian life, the employing class saw in the resulting clamor for jobs an opportunity to destroy the trade union hold established on industry during the war years. The strike started in the metal trades, the workers struggling to protect the right of collective bargaining. The general strike was a sympathy strike, the workers in other industries believing that what was happening to the metal workers would soon be happening to them. The employers used the Bolshevik bogey to weaken the workers’ position and increase official concern, actual and fraudulent. The strike, so went the pretence, was not a strike but a revolution.

The crusade was so successful that the strike was soon broken, a large number of those favoring or taking part in it being arrested, the eight “strike leaders” sent to prison on charges that included “seditious conspiracy to overthrow the state”.

At this point an interesting comparison may be noted. W. A. Pritchard, one of the “conspirators”, said at the trail:

“As I stand here before you in this court, my mind travels to the 17th of February, in the year 1600, when Giordano Bruno offered his life, bound to the stake in the flower market of Rome, because of his scientific analysis of the then known world; because he followed his intellectual master Copernicus and had declared in certain writings that the earth was not geocentric; that the earth was not the center of the solar system, but the sun. Of course, he had taken these findings and levelled them against the superstition and ignorance of his day, and because of that fact we find him bound to a stake on the 17th of February, in the year 1600, in the flower market of Rome”
( W. A. Pritchard’s Address to the Jury, Winnipeg, p. 4).

R. B. Russell (another of the “conspirators”) said:

“A torch applied to a green field may not be likely to cause a fire, yet when the grass is ripe and dry a spark may cause a conflagration. Just so, words spoken in privacy or during a quarrel, or in the heat of the moment, or in normal times, may be unlikely to have a seditious effect, and may be overlooked; yet when spoken in times of stress and in more public places, may be likely to cause such discontent, hostility and disturbance as to be seditious. If the words spoken or published are seditious, it is no defence that they are true, and evidence to prove the truth is inadmissible”
(The Winnipeg General Sympathetic Strike, Winnipeg, p. 238).

The Socialist Party was in no way involved in the strike. Yet five of the eight imprisoned were members of the Party [16] and numerous quotations from Party literature and correspondence were used in the trials to establish that the strike was the work of the devil. The onslaught against collective bargaining was not considered.

On July, 1920 the Western Clarion reported Armstrong’s election to the Manitoba legislature. Russell also ran and was eliminated on the 37th count.

As noted earlier, the Party had never been an advocate of violence. It look to the soap box in numerous elections and never mistook broken bricks for political power. In the free speech police riots before the war more police were injured falling over their own feet than from counter-attacks by their victims. The nearest the Party came in concession to violence was stated in the Manifesto:

“Political action we define as any action taken by the slave class against the master class to obtain control of the powers of state, or by the master class to retain control, using these powers to secure them in the means of life.
In one country it may be the ballot, in another the mass strike, in a third insurrection. These matters will be determined and dictated by the exigencies of time and place”
(Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Canada, p. 39, 1920 edition).

But violence was all around: the slaughter in Europe, the persecution at home, the Russian upheaval and the war against Bolshevism, all these and revolts exploding in one country and another caused many to believe a reassessment of Party views was necessary. Particularly was it felt that a parliamentary transition from capitalism to Socialism was no longer believable. The rapid road of civil war, which the Bolsheviks claimed was imminent throughout the capitalist world and which, with the proper leadership, would end in victory for the workers, appealed to them. They became converts to the Bolshevik road to revolution.

The concern of Lenin and his associates with events outside Russia was quite clear. They believed the victory in Russia could only be maintained by the rise to power of the workers of other countries and they devoted much time encouraging the workers to travel the Bolshevik road. This led to efforts by them to gain control of the workers’ movement.

Bolshevik theory and the “need” to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” patterned after the one in Russia, became regular fare in the Western Clarion. But the discussion was not one-sided. There were those in the Party who, though strongly sympathetic to the revolution in Russia, were not sold on the idea that a dictatorship of the proletariat was either necessary or desirable. They insisted that the course followed by the Party was still proper in a country where, they insisted, the proletariat had not reached revolutionary consciousness. In this vein J. A. McDonald wrote:

“Instead of hollering ourselves hoarse about the virtues of mass action that can do something spectacular, and not understand why we do it, let us work in the sphere in which we find ourselves and teach Socialism to others of our class” (Western Clarion, November 16, 1920).

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